J O U R N A L / B L O G

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Friday, March 22, 2013

In watercolors, I at once found something new and stumbled
into an old friend. In finally finding a way of working with the pure negative
space first experimented with in my web design photo manipulations for my first
artist website (but never until now really ‘worked into’ for long enough to
reveal features and the feel of working in that way as a practice rather than
experiment) I discovered that the pure negative space has a charge that is
entirely similar to the charge a completely blank canvas has before any mark
has been made.

There
is nothing for a painter like staring into a blank canvas. It is a wonderful
(and sometimes terrible) experience. I made a point of taking a whole day to do
it at Evergreen one time, and it was a very productive thing to do. I think it
is different for everyone, so I’ll not get too deep into what I felt. I simply
felt more and more like a painter the more and more I looked at that empty
surface: as a context, a framework, a medium, it was beautiful to me. It was
something I had found. Similar to the way an empty Microsoft word document
looks. And I spent time imagining all the things I might paint, all the things
that build up behind the motion of a hand and brush movement, and are instantly
translated into a new language, not from an old language so much as from no
language at all. Wonderful to think of all the memories and ideas that
influence a mark made. Yet none control it completely. In the matter of
control, the outside jumps in and has its own influences. And so painting is
not just an expression, but an interaction (hopefully that idea does not feel
too cliché by the end of my writing). Who wants to have a one sided
conversation? My imagination brimmed not just with the things I was bringing
with me to the threshold of creation, but with the conversations I was going to
have with the forces of reality containing both the canvas and I.

Usually in my process
of painting, there is kind of an initial goal of ‘filling’ the canvas, and then
working into it. No space is to be left untouched, for the painting is either
like a window or photograph into or of something, or at least it is a
rectangular composition of form that relates its movement to the angles of the
rectangle, and so every part of it contributes in an intentional way that I
would intuitively associate with mark-making and treatment, however light or
dark in contrast to other elements. That could even involve re-painting a flat
white, but not a total lack of painting. I wanted the surface quality of my
whole painting to be painted, it was simply the framework in which I thought
about paintings. As I experimented in my painting practice I did make many
attempts to leave untouched space in my paintings, but it never actually worked.
It always looked unfinished—or rather, the elements I had painted in looked unfinished. The emptiness did not become a
part of the total aesthetic effect in an immediately appreciable way. I tried
this enough times that it frustrated me, and my next experiment was to try to
relate the edges of what was painted with the empty space in a more complex
way. The result of that more intensive attempt to paint with totally negative
space left in the rectangle ultimately did not succeed either, though I enjoyed
painting it.

The
fact that I enjoyed painting it should have been a bigger tip off to me. When
you are getting something out of the process, you enjoy it. As an artist I
don’t think it’s reasonable to always expect to ‘enjoy’ making things, but if it
starts to go away entirely you have a big problem on your hands. If you can’t
get it back somehow, it is an unsolvable problem, and eventually you will not
be creating or you will be so miserable that creating will mean nothing to you.
Maybe you’re a machine and that’s ok with you. …Actually, the masochism to make
ourselves into machines is a powerful tool for anyone, including artists. But
in the very ability to make oneself into a machine is a suggestion I think,
that one should not ever try to be just one machine, or hone just one nature.
Flexibility and plasticity is the point, and the trap of consistency, baited
with whatever (emotional ease, laziness, comfort, safety, security, respect,
understanding), is a fatal one for an artist. The easiest way to figure out if
you’re in the trap is to check and see if you are excited to work on your art.
There will be many things you will consider as well, and in my case and many
other’s, many times in which you consider those other things more important or
worthwhile. Things like beauty, and cohesiveness, and responses from peers or
family or friends or critics. And especially: your own critical response. Sure,
those things might be important for the art. But the artist is a different
story. Anyone who has been an artist for more than a few years as a serious
endeavor knows that muses are fickle. It’s impossible to predict when they will
wither and leave, when a dead muse will suddenly burst back into life, and just
where in the hell the next one is hiding. An essential part to any artist is
trust. Trust in something completely outside of yourself—and the dedication to
move on in spite of ignorance. Another essential part of any artist is a respect
of process. If you are considering being an artist you are probably already
obsessed with the idea of finishing a work of art. That’s not something most
artists really have to worry about. It’s already in their inclinations to want
to finish something and be excited by that. The real goal is to not loose
excitement in the process. If you can do that then you will not only finish
things, you will keep making and finishing more things, and the most rewarding
part of that cycle will not be any part of it in particular. It will be great
to finish, but it will also be great to start. If you get a ton of satisfaction
and happiness from finishing a work of art, if you really feel better than you
have in ages, you’re in trouble.